


Hacked

by vands88



Category: Campaign Podcast, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Plot is just an excuse for angst, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, bluebird - Freeform, this is probably not how technology works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-05-16 11:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vands88/pseuds/vands88
Summary: Zero gets hacked. Blue freaks out.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prim_the_Amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/gifts).



> Many thanks for Prim for bidding on my fic for Fandom Trumps Hate 2018 and for requesting such an awesome prompt. I'm sorry it's taken me a couple of months to get writing! ~~I'm envisioning about 3 chapters for this one because I know roughly where it's heading... but I don't know whether or not it'll include porn yet ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I'll increase the rating if it gets raunchy. Oh, and I'm going to try and update every week or so, but I already foresee me fucking that up.~~ Man, past!self is hilarious. More chapters than planned. No porn. The weekly schedule was fucked from the get go. But I have finally edited this shit so hopefully there's at least 90% less typos than first posting.
> 
> Other things I should probably acknowledge  
> * I have no idea how technology works in Star Wars  
> * I have no idea how to swear in Star Wars  
> * I have no idea how to Star Wars
> 
> Thank you & enjoy! :D

It happens, predictably, at the worst possible time. The blaster in his cybernetic arm jams unexpectedly just as he’s facing down three heavily armed rebels.

“Kriff,” Zero mutters, ducking behind a heavy crate as blaster fire continues past him, a little too close for comfort.

“What is it?” Aava asks over the comms.

“My kriffing arm. It’s stuck somehow. I gotta reboot. But I got three rebels on my tail and no kriffing blaster.”

“You got your sword?”

Zero looks beside him on the dusty ground of the spaceport where his vibrosword lies in two very distinct pieces with no deadly energy humming between them. “Nah, it’s dead. As am I if I don’t-” he ducks as a grenade shatters the crate around him. He feels a particularly large shard fly through his armour and wedge into his flesh bicep and Zero is suddenly very glad he turned his pain function off at the start of the battle. “Aw man.”

He runs under the cover of flying debris towards another - hopefully much sturdier - crate. He glances at his cybernetic arm as he takes cover, hoping that the reset will have kicked in by now, but a frown emoji flashes on his visor when he realises that it hasn’t rebooted at all. There’s not even an error message displayed. The entire thing is just… offline or something.

“What is it?” Aava asks, and Zero has no idea how to prioritise between _got_ _hit by a grenade_ , _got some space junk stuck in a major artery_ , and _an entire body part is offline_. He makes some kinda strangled noise instead.

 _Oh Force, is this how I’m going to die?_ he thinks, as panic creeps up on him. _Cowering behind a crate full of spice on dusty spaceport on a backwater planet that I can’t even remember the name of?_

He always figured he’d die protecting Blue from doing something inordinately stupid. He thought there would at least be explosions, and cool stunts, and dramatic speeches, but now that he’s actually lying here, defenceless and bleeding out on the tarmac, he can’t think of a single smart thing to say.

And then, his head does something that he’s pretty sure has nothing to do with heavy blood loss. Light-headed and garbled. Like squinting into the sun. It feels like…

_Oh, no._

He knows _exactly_ what this feels like.

When he was eight years old and was first fitted with cybernetic enhancements, his brain felt like this. Dissonance, they called it. When your brain has to adapt to a new way of thinking. New circuits. He still gets this a little every time Blue gives him an upgrade, but it’s normally blink-and-you-miss-it disorientation, never to this extent.

“Aava,” he manages to say, before his head becomes nothing but ones and zeros. “There’s something wrong… I’m being…”

Aava’s voice becomes disjointed, nonsensical background noise, as his brain is rapidly rewired. It’s like screeching wheels. Pulled muscles. It’s like he can feel every cell screaming as it’s torn apart and reordered in order to shape around the intruder.

There’s still a battle going on. He feels a blaster score his leg. He hears screams and he doesn’t know where from. The sound of a lightsaber powering up. Eventually, the blinding light subsides and an error message blinks up on his visor.

>>>PWNED<<<

 _Mature_ , Zero thinks wryly. If it’s not bad enough he’s been hacked, he’s been hacked by juvenile children.

Zero tests every function he can think of but the hackers have blocked all control. He scans the code they used to splice him and fails to find a single giveaway. There’s not even a name embedded. He has no way to contact them. Whoever this is has completely disabled him in the middle of a warzone and isn’t even polite enough to _chat_ about it.

The one blessing is that his actual mind appears to be intact; at least he’s not totally incapacitated during this abduction; as long as he has a working mind, he might be able to find a way out of this.

He tries to move his injured flesh arm to his ear so he can communicate with Aava, but, of course, his arm doesn’t move. There’s not a single limb that isn’t wired into his mainframe. He’s just slumped behind this crate, completely motionless, while his mind goes into overdrive trying to find a way out of this.

Was their plan just to take him offline? Just turn him off and let the rebels pick him off?

 _Congratulations, Rebel Scum_ , he thinks sarcastically, _you’ve found an even worse way for me to die_.

Over the sound of the battle, he hears Blue call his name over the comm - his actual kriffing name - completely panicked. “0ni? Are you okay? I don’t understand these readings. What’s happening? Are you okay? What’s going on? 0ni?”

Zero closes his eyes against the emotional onslaught. He hates Blue’s pestering at the best of times, but the one time he’s desperate to reply, to reassure him, and he _can’t_. “Just let me reply,” he mutters under his breath, knowing that his captors must be able to see and hear him, “Just let me say goodbye at least. Please.”

He refuses to acknowledge a tear falling behind his visor. He wants to clench his fist in frustration but his fingers won’t cooperate. He’s going to die, trapped by his own body, while Blue pleads for him to speak. What kind of monster -

A message appears on the inside of his visor where his life signs and stats are usually displayed. Swiftly followed by another one. And another.

>>> u got feelings 4 him? 4 real?

>>> lmao

>>> this will make this sooooo much more fun

The messages disappear just as quickly as they came; zeros and ones reclaiming the space of the hijacked screen within seconds.

“What,” Zero says, reeling. “What?”

He hears his cybernetic arm whirring to life, and a second later, his muscles move against his will, pushing him to his feet.

The meaning of the messages click together with sudden, painful clarity: the hackers are after _Blue_.

“Oh no, no, no, no-”

 _Oh Force_ , they’re after Adnau. And Zero can’t even _warn_ him.

Thank Force Blue is back on the ship. If the hackers had taken control of his body this morning at breakfast, or this afternoon during meetings, or literally at any other hour of any other day … Blue would already be dead.

“Zero?” Blue asks over the comm, his voice pitched high with hope.

“I’m sorry,” Zero whimpers even though he knows Blue can't hear him. He knows how much this is going to kill him (perhaps literally) as he helplessly follows his captors’ orders.

He stands. The dust of battle settles and he is afforded the glorious sight of Aava standing over three dead rebels with her lightsaber still humming red. This is normally his favourite view in the world, but as his repulsor fist is activated, and his arm is raised towards her, it’s suddenly nothing of the sort.

Her head snaps up and he’s never been more thankful that he’s friends with a force witch because she sprints for cover before the shot is even fired. By the time he’s finished calling out her name in a futile warning, she’s far from the scene and the ship that was behind her is blown into the sky.

 _Kriffing hell_ , these guys are not messing around. That must have been on the highest setting. The place where Aava was standing is no more than flame and rubble.

“Aava!” he shouts across the decimated spaceport. “Are you okay? Aava!”

Zero’s fairly certain by now that she can’t hear him over comms but he hopes at this distance that his voice might be loud enough to be physically heard through his helmet. There’s no reply to confirm either way, but he hears a faint sound of movement in the distance that reassures him she made it out.

But then, he realises, that as soon as he looked, _they_ looked, and he finds himself sprinting across the runway in her direction.

His comm is nothing but panic from his crewmates, and he wants to reassure them somehow, let them know that it’s not him, even as its his arm that is shooting blasters at the distant figure of Aava ducking in and out of debris.

“-I’m telling you, that’s not Zero-” Aava is telling Synox.

“-turn right, towards the-” Blue is saying.

“-should we even be transmitting if he can hear-” Synox begins.

“-he tried to warn us-” Aava continues. “I think he’s been hacked-”

 _Yes, thank you, Aava,_ Zero praises even as he jumps up onto a crate to get a good vantage point and he hears the repulsor fist preparing to fire again.

“Impossible,” Blue dismisses. “His gear is top grade. And so am I.”

Zero rolls his eyes behind his visor, annoyed at Blue’s arrogance, even as he shouts another warning to Aava.

Synox is the one to argue back, “Minister, you might have to accept that someone managed to hack through your defences because the alternative is that-”

“He just gave me a warning,” Aava interrupts, “before he lit the place up again. Zero is Zero. Someone’s just got control of his body.”

Blue swears more colourfully than Zero thought was possible. He’s kinda proud of the guy.

“Okay,” Synox says, ever the voice of reason, “We need to get Aava out of there _now_.”

“What do you think I’m _trying_ to do?” Aava yells as she ducks from another one of Zero’s blaster shots.

“No,” Blue says, “what we need to do is get Zero.”

“What?!” they all exclaim in unison, even Zero, though he knows his protest went unheard.

“We can stun him,” Blue says. “Knock him out.”

“And then what?!” Synox exclaims. “Stash him in the fresher?!”

“I don’t know!” Blue yells. “We’ll think of something!”

Zero’s body ducks as Aava throws a knife his way. He’s been gaining on her. The closer he is, the harder it is for Aava to avoid his shots, even with the Force on her side. He’s always been morbidly curious about who would win in a fight between him and Aava but this is not how he intended to find out.

“Would a stun even keep him down?” Synox asks.

Zero hears Blue hesitate. They both know the answer is ‘no’.

Zero winces, suddenly realising the solution. If Blue really is the hacker’s target, as his captors have implied, then they can’t take the risk. Zero knows where the Bluebird currently is. But it’s not in his digital memory; it’s in his _biological_ memory. This means that the hackers don’t currently know where Blue is, but as soon as the Bluebird comes to rescue Aava, then they will. This body - _his_ body - cannot get anywhere near the Bluebird.

“Shoot me!” Zero shouts across to Aava, as loud as he possibly can to be heard above the gunfire.

He knows she hears because her movements suddenly still, just for a moment, just a little glimpse of weakness, but enough for him to know that she heard.

“You need to kill me!” he shouts, trying again. “They’re after Blue!”

This time she stops completely. Her lightsaber flares to life.

She understood. _Oh thank Force_ , she understood.

Zero’s body stutters to a halt, only six feet from her.

>>> ur no fun

>>> shoulda gagged you

“Oh yeah?” Zero mutters to his captors. “I’d like to see you try.”

Aava turns towards him, lightsaber at the ready, and her hand raised in preparation for scary force stuff.

Zero and Aava stare each other down across the deserted spaceport. His comm erupts with voices again.

“Aava, what are you-?”

“-hold on! I just need a minute to reconfigure-”

“-they’re after you, Blue. Zero just said-”

“-it’s too late, she’s got to-”

“-no, I can do it, I just need two sec-”

“-she doesn’t have two seconds!”

“-we have to-”

“No!” Blue interrupts, so loud and authoritative, that even Zero’s captors seem to freeze with the determination of it. “I am _not_ leaving him behind.”

In the stunned silence that follows, Zero’s heart swells with warmth. “Oh you idiot,” Zero mutters affectionately. “You stupid, sentimental, idiot. You’re going to get yourself killed”

“Did you not hear me?!” Aava exclaims, echoing his sentiments, albeit without the sappy parts. “Zero said his captors are trying to _kill_ you. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yes,” Blue says decisively. “It means that there’s still enough of Zero left in there to care. I’m not giving up on him.”

“Oh you sweet, stupid, little-” Zero begins, but his name-calling stalls when he hears his repulsor fist start up again, aimed directly at Aava. “Aw no, come on.”

But then, several things happen at once -

Zero hears the roar of an overhead engine. A sudden dust cloud obscures his sight. Aava disappears. His repulsor fist fires. A red light appears through the haze before him. He smells fumes.

And then, Zero feels a massive force hit his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you suspected before that I have no idea how technology works in Star Wars then welcome to Chapter Two where I outright solidify those fears.

Zero has had bad hangovers before but this has to be breaking some sort of record. There’s a constant high-pitched noise ringing in his head like a major circuit has been disconnected and his brain feels mushy and kinda drugged up, like he’s not quite himself. He groans and attempts to move, regretting it immediately when pain shoots up his entire body. His arm. His torso. His leg. Who the kriff turned the pain back on?!

The battle comes back to him in flashes. Aava. Grenade. Hacker. The last thing he remembers is getting shot by the blaster turrets of the Bluebird. Was he dead then? That would suck. He never really believed in any kind of afterlife but it’s fair to say that any deity would probably come to the conclusion that he deserved an afterlife of eternal pain. But... if he’s dead, then that means that Blue’s alive and that’s gotta count for something at least.

Zero breathes through the pain and comes to the obvious conclusion that the only way to know for sure if he’s a) dead and b) destined to an afterlife of pain is to open his blasted eyes and find out.

He groans again as his eyes crack open to a blinding light and an even worse pain shoots through him.

“0ni?”

Blue. That’s Blue. There’s no Blue in hell.

Zero’s eyes tear open, pain be damned. He struggles to sit up. For a minute, there is only white light. A cot. A cell. The Bluebird. Then, through the earsplitting noise, he hears Blue - “careful, careful” - his voice getting closer, until Zero feels something other than pain; he feels Blue’s warm hand against his bare chest, supporting him.

He shudders against the touch; the gentle brush of skin against skin contrasted so much with the intense pain everywhere else. Relief courses through him at the knowledge that whatever happened, Blue is okay, and they’re both somehow alive. Maybe Blue in all his brilliance has found a way out of this.

“Adnau?” he croaks. He knows it to be true but his eyesight has only cleared enough to see a fuzzy patch of ginger hair and the outline of glasses. Maybe his cybernetic eye is still offline. That would explain the fuzziness. “What happened?”

“I hit you with the Bluebird,” Blue says, sounding very smug for someone who just inflicted more pain upon Zero than anyone else in his entire lifetime and then had the gall to put him in a holding cell. “I spliced the turret to stun. Still a karkload of power coming right at you though. But I figured it might have the added bonus of short-circuiting your mainframe long enough for us to come up with a plan. That’s why all your systems are offline by the way. And why you’re kinda naked. I literally had to splice your heart into beating again.”

Zero’s single biological eye focuses enough just to see the movement of Blue’s adam’s apple in front of him and realises that despite Blue’s bravado, that might not have been an easy thing to do. Zero’s eyes really are worth kark without his visor. He has no helmet on right now and no deadly arm and even his clothes are missing or torn. But somehow he’s less concerned with how hideous he looks, sitting here looking wretched and exposed, and more concerned that he can’t read Blue’s face.

“It’s a temporary solution, of course,” Blue is saying, heedless of Zero’s discomfort. The warming touch against his side disappears as Blue begins tapping away on a datapad plugged into one of Zero’s many outputs. “Too many of your core functions rely upon that mainframe, we’re going to have to get it back online before it causes you serious damage but it bought us some time to figure out-”

“Temporary...solution…” Zero says with dawning terror. “Blue,” he says, his sluggish mind suddenly pushed aside by panic. “My systems could come back online at any time. The hacker is probably rebooting them right now. You _have_ to get out of here. _Now_. It’s not safe.”

“Obviously,” Blue dismisses. He doesn’t move a damn inch. He keeps scrolling through the attached datapad, analysing Zero’s code, as if Zero couldn’t reach out and break his neck at any second.

Zero growls in annoyance and reaches out to grasp Blue’s arm.

Zero hears the distant click of blasters and with a spike of fear, looks behind Blue and the white box of the holding cell for the first time to see two distant figures by the door. Aava and Synox. Of course. They’re not as blindingly cavalier as Blue, thank Force.

He looks back at Blue but his face is blurry and unreadable and Zero wonders if Blue is actually as afraid as he probably should have been this whole time.

Zero slowly and deliberately lets go of Blue’s arm, and holds his hands in surrender until he knows his bodyguards have seen it.

“Disengage,” Blue orders, and it’s only then that the two distant blurry figures finally lower their weapons.

“I meant it, Blue, when I asked Aava to shoot me back onplanet. The hackers know where you are now. It was karking stupid what you did.”

He hears muttering in the distance and assumes that his team agree.

Blue starts to defend himself. “It doesn’t matter, we’re far from-”

“They embedded a tracker-”

“You’re offline, there’s no signal-”

“They were _smart_ , Blue-”

“Not smarter than me,” he snaps.

Zero growls. He can’t believe he barely survived death only to have yet another argument with his charge that ultimately boils down to his _ego_. Blue was always a bratty kid and it only seems to have gotten worse with age.

Zero goes to clench his cybernetic fist with anger and when he realises he _can’t_ because it’s been taken from him, he lets out a howl of rage that spurs the distant sound of a lightsaber. “Dammit, Adnau, listen to me for once in your karking life. This guy is _dangerous._ He trounced your defences once and he’ll do it again. Look, I don’t want to believe that he can outsmart you either - it’s deeply, _deeply_ , unsettling - but there’s also no way in hell I’m betting your life on your ego. The only way I can keep you safe is if you put a karking blaster through my skull and leave me to rot in a karking desert, preferably several thousand miles away from you.”

He can’t read Blue’s face. It’s unmoving in front of him. He sees the distant flare of Aava’s lightsaber. He wants his visor back. He hates the lack of information that comes with being offline. He feels utterly helpless for the second time that day and he really kriffing hates it.

“Leave us,” Blue orders.

There are distant sounds of protest but Blue doesn’t turn his head away from Zero and Zero stares right back, trying to read the blurry face before him.

“I _said_  leave us.”

Zero sees the distant figures get even more distant. “That was karking stupid too, if you didn’t know.”

“Oh shut up,” Blue says, and it’s funny because Zero can’t see a damn thing but he swears he sees Blue’s shoulders slump as soon as they’re alone, as if he’s more relaxed being _alone_ with a murderous killbot than having backup.

Blue puts down the datapad and slumps next to Zero on the cell cot. “You’re right,” he admits, which is so out of character that it honestly takes Zero a minute to convince himself that he didn’t mishear the phrase. “This is my fault.”

“Oh, hey, now,” Zero says awkwardly, “I didn’t say that.”

“You should have done. This never should have happened. That’s my code in you.”

“Hey, I like having your code in me,” Zero interrupts with a wink, and it’s super weird to actually do the movement instead of seeing the emoji before him. He’s suddenly _really_ aware that he’s half-naked.

Blue huffs a laugh, and he’s close enough now that Zero can imagine the little blush on his cheeks. It’s always so easy to wind him up.

“And it’s _not_ your fault,” Zero emphasises, as he clearly derailed whatever it was that Blue was going to say. “You didn’t know this would happen.”

“I should’ve. I should’ve seen it coming. I saw an abnormality when I was debugging you weeks ago and I didn’t even say anything.”

Zero puts his hand on Blue’s shoulder in solidarity. Just the mention of their debugging sessions makes him really not want to die. It’s… nice. Like a massage for your brain. The thought that he might never feel the gentle touch of Blue in his circuits again is really bumming him out. He was actually starting to like his systems, it was starting to feel like it was all _him,_ and then… this happens, and it all feels as alien and as invasive as it did before he met Blue.

“You couldn’t have known,” Zero assures him. “But I’m serious, we might not have much time left. If you haven’t worked out how to kick the hacker out by now, then the best thing to do is-”

“No,” Blue cuts across him. He scowls with folded arms and it’s so reminiscent of the bratty teen that Zero first met that it fills him with affection. He wonders at what point he stopped thinking of Blue as a child to be put up with, and started thinking of him as the stubborn (yet genius) man that he is. “I’m not giving up.”

Zero sighs. Blue’s always loved a challenge. “Blue, you’re a genius, but sometimes there are puzzles that can’t be solved.”

Blue shakes his head with a laugh. “You are _such_ an imbecile. I meant that I’m not giving up on _you_ , you fruitcake. If your system’s fried, that’s one thing, but you’re not just a kriffing _machine_ , and I’m not just gonna pull the plug and walk away like it’s nothing, no matter how much you want me to. It’s not happening, okay? Get that through your thick skull already.”

 _Oh_.

Zero’s insides do something that is very mushy and emotionally confusing.

“What?” Blue says. “You’re looking at me funny.”

Zero feels himself flush in embarrassment. He’s so used to having his helmet to hide behind that he forgot that you can’t just _stare_ at people without it being weird. “Uh, sorry,” he says, clearing his throat, as he searches for an excuse, “I kinda zoned out there.You gave me far too many painkillers.”

“Oh, how romantic,” Blue mutters sarcastically.

Zero frowns. He didn’t know if he was meant to hear that or not. Maybe he _mis_ heard it because if Blue was expecting something romantic from Zero then Zero must have missed a memo at some point. Sure, Zero has been low-key lusting after Blue for what some would say was an inappropriate amount of time but he didn’t think he was giving out any vibes, especially considering that Blue has always seemed very uninterested in that sort of thing.

 _Force_ , Zero wishes he could see his face. He can’t make sense of this situation without any data. It might just have been a meaningless comment. Before today, he might not even have paused at the words, but the kriffing hacker has gotten in his head; making him think that it could mean something _more._

“So, um,” Zero says after the awkward silence has gotten too awkward. “What’s the plan for when I come back online? If you insist on keeping me alive?”

Zero might not be able to see but he can still hear the smugness in his voice when Blue replies, “I hid a reverse-tracker in their code.”

“Dude, seriously?!”

“Yes, yes, it’s extremely clever,” Blue dismisses. “I found the foreign code and it’s so karking ugly, like a kriffing frankenstein of a being, that I don’t think they’ll find what I’ve hidden beneath all that excess garbage. So when you come back online, it’ll tell me where this coward is lurking, and then I’ll find them and string them up by their guts. What they’ve done to your system is too brutish for me to extract everything from here but once we’ve found them and I splice into their system, I should be able to reverse it. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, guts hanging freely.”

“Nice,” Zero says. It’s such a beautiful plan that if his penis was online he’d totally be getting a boner right now. He has no doubts that Blue will make good on his promise to bring a painful and mortifying death to this guy. But… “What about me?” Zero asks. “I have to be online for you to get a signal and unless you have another superpowered stun gun at the ready… I’m going to be live and kicking for all of it.” He squints around the holding cell, trying to remember what facilities are here and if it’s enough to keep him down when he’s back online.

“Yeah, about that…” Blue says, and indicates towards something that Zero can’t see. “Oh, sorry,” he says with belated realisation and brings the pile of goodies closer to Zero so he can make out the shape of them. “We’re going to restrain you. You’ll have your strength when you’re back online which might be an issue... but we’ve removed all the weapons attached to you and there’s nothing in this room that you could possibly fashion as a weapon. It’s basically a padded cell. We’ve put an open comm on the inside of your visor so you can let us know if the hacker is doing something we need to be aware of. But other than that… you’ve just got to hold tight and wait for us to string up some rebels.”

Zero nods. Being restrained and weaponless makes him nervous but he doesn’t want his superpowered arm in the hands of the hacker again. It makes sense. He doesn’t like it. He still thinks it’s safer for Blue to be far, far, away from him. But, he gets it.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Blue says, and Zero raises an eyebrow (again, finding it strange to flex the actual muscles) because Blue always plays this game and fails. “You don’t like that I’m keeping you here instead of dumping you on backwater planet somewhere.”

“Oh hey, for once you’re actually right.”

“I’m always right,” Blue dismisses, “But if we did that, they could just come pick you up and turn you into an even worse murder weapon, and they’d be no one there to stop them. As long as you’re here, within proximity to me, then they’re going to be so busy trying to find a way to kill me, that they’re not even going to see us coming. This way, we keep them distracted. And you won’t be more than ten feet away from Aava Arek, which I find somewhat reassuring.”

Zero smiles. That _is_ reassuring. Aava could put him down like an irksome fly now he’s without his cybernetic arm. Blue won’t get hurt, and he won’t get taken, so long as Aava stands between them and the hacker. “That is… actually not a completely terrible plan.”

Blue tilts his head slightly, like he’s smiling back, and Zero aches to see it. There’s an odd sort of tension between them. Like magnets. He feels himself falling into it. He wants to reach for Blue, to reassure himself that he’s alive, and safe, and warm… Zero feels his lips tingle and he suddenly knows, with terrifying clarity, exactly what it is that he wants.

 _Kark that karking hacker_.

Suddenly, a loud alarm blares from the datapad.

Blue startles, jumping to his feet and yanking the datapad out from his circuits. Zero’s head feels… messy. Oh _no_. It’s happening again.

“They’re getting back in,” Blue confirms.

Zero is overwhelmed with panic. Now, on top of the constant noise and pain from his wounds is a resurgence of the invasion in his head, but this time he can _feel_ it, like a migraine burrowing deeper and deeper as it pushes into him. The high-pitched note of disconnect from before wails even louder as the hacker tries to connect to the helmet that is no longer there. Zero screams in anguish as he falls under their assault. “ _Go_ ,” he orders through gritted teeth. He feels tears being pushed out of his eye.

He opens his eyes to see Blue pulling equipment from in and around Zero and throwing it out the cell door. There can be nothing left in here with him. “I thought we had longer,” he is mumbling, but Zero can barely hear him over the intense screaming in his head.

“Quickly,” Zero manages to gasp between breaths.

Blue sprints back to him with the helmet in his outstretched hands.

But then he pauses, an inch from his face. Zero wants to scream because Blue needs to _go_ and why the hell is he hesitating but then... Zero realises why. This is _goodbye_.

Zero makes a garbled little noise that has nothing to do with the pain in his head and everything to do with the pain in his heart as the two of them stand there, suspended in time. Zero wants to kiss him so bad it’s like burning but he’s frozen with fear. His mind is a chaotic series of ones and zeros screaming at the disconnect, and there’s no way he can sort out his thoughts and feelings with this much background noise in the way.

Blue doesn’t like him, Zero remembers. Yes, the hacker’s just gotten to him. _Come on, 0ni,_ he scolds himself, _get it together. Get it TOGETHER._

Blue snaps out of it first and unceremoniously yanks the helmet onto Zero’s head.

Zero gasps with relief as the circuit is finally completed and the screaming stops and his pain cuts off and he can finally _finally_ see Blue’s face in the high definition it was always meant to be. There’s a slight indentation on his bottom lip. His mouth is still slightly agape. His freckled cheeks are flushed. His blue eyes are wide and sparkling like gentle waves over white sand. It’s the most beautiful sight that Zero has ever seen.

And… oh, _kark_.

The realisation hits him harder than the stun from the Bluebird’s blaster turret.

It’s not the hacker just messing with Zero. Zero _loves_ Blue. For real. He karking _loves_ him. How in hell did he not see this before?! He’s been low-key crushing on Blue for so long that he didn’t even realise that he’d _fallen in love_ with the asshole somewhere along the line.

 _Holy. Anakin. Skywalker_.

He loves him.

But before he can even fully process this revelation, ones and zeros begin to move on his visor and Zero knows that they have seconds, if that, before the hacker has total control.

His heart aches, callously oscillating between hope and danger. “ _Go_ ,” Zero urges again. “You need to go.”

Blue gasps, as if he too has only just regained his senses, and nods, scuttling away as fast as possible. He hesitates the other side of the cell door, abandoned tech littering the white linoleum at his feet.

Zero wants to give him some kind of reassurance that they’ll both get out of this alive but the truth is that they don’t know for sure. He wishes he kissed him. Instead, he gives Blue a firm nod. _I’ve got this_ , he wants to say, and Blue, seemingly understanding, returns the solemn gesture and firmly locks the cell door behind him.

The numbers turn into letters just as Blue disappears from sight.

>>> im back bitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't you love our sassy little hacker?
> 
> Fun fact: in the first draft of this chapter, Blue actually did kiss Zero when he said goodbye and it was fucking A+++++ but then I realised that torturing you guys with, like, three more chapters of pining would be a lot more fun. You're welcome.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why is there an entire month between updates you ask? Did something dramatic happen in Vands's life? Did they lapse into depression? Did they fall in love and elope in Barbados? Or, more likely, did the zeblue feels from the last episode finally kill them???
> 
> None of the above. But I did binge Black Sails and briefly forgot that there was life outside of Nassau. 
> 
> Sorry.
> 
> OH! Serious stuff - there be some gore in this chapter, so I hope you're made from harder stuff than Blue, who, as you're about to see, is Not Equipped To Deal.

>>> ur arm’s gone

>>> :-(

“Obviously,” Zero mutters, as the hacker moves his body limb by limb, assessing for damage as Zero sits on the cell cot. “Any other groundbreaking revelations you’d like to share?”

>>> yeh

>>> we r in hyperdrive

>>> n locked up

>>> ...no cuffs tho

>>> oh n u got sum srsly furry legs my dude

_Oh, Kriff._

He was meant to be restrained, Zero recalls with dread, but somehow in all the chaos, Blue didn’t so much as cuff him to the cot. There’s nothing between him and Blue except a single glass barrier. And Aava Arek. But the hacker doesn’t know that. The hacker might feel emboldened despite the cell door; might try something stupid unless Zero can distract him well enough.

Zero takes a deep breath and pretends for his captor’s sake that he’s nowhere near as panicked as he actually is. “I’m a gank, man. ‘Course I’ve got furry legs. I got furry everything. If it ain’t beeping, it’s moulting. Bet I’m nowhere near as butt ugly as you though, sitting in your mamma’s basement playing at being a hero.”

>>> i dunno man

>>> ur the 1 crushing on a kid

>>> kinda gross

“He’s not a kid,” Zero bites between gritted teeth. “Besides, you’re the one trying to kill him, if he’s-” Zero cuts himself short. The crew can’t see everything the hacker’s saying, but they can sure as hell hear Zero’s replies now. He’d rather not confess his newfound feelings to the entire crew. “Whatever,” he dismisses. “If he’s too young for that, then maybe he’s also too young for you to be killing him.”

There’s a pause that gives Zero hope that the hacker might actually be considering this, or at least might reveal something of their motive in response, but then, comes the disappointing reply:

>>> no

>>> he gonna die

“And here I thought we were bonding,” Zero mutters.

>>> no

>>> ur bf gonna die

>>> u gonna kill him

>>> slow

>>> pain

>>> he gonna beg 4 his life

>>> while u pull out his fingernails

>>> n stick needles in his eyes

>>> it gonna be gud

>>> & i ain’t in no basement

Zero pulls in a sharp breath at the visual and realises his mistake a moment later when panicked chatter erupts in his ear.

“Zero?” asks Synox. “What’s going on? What did they say?”

“Are you okay?!” Blue exclaims, not even waiting for Synox to finish his questioning.

“Nothing,” Zero bites. “I’m okay.”

>>> they can hear u now???

And then, Zero realises his second mistake.

>>> lmao

>>> now they wil hear u cry like a pussy when u kill them

“Ain’t that just peachy,” Zero mutters. He wishes he could just turn off his kriffing visor so he wouldn’t have to see the taunts thrown his way, but he realises that even if he did have the power to do that, he wouldn’t be able to hear his crewmates either, and he doesn’t want to lose what may be his last tenuous connection to Blue. “And how exactly do you plan on killing my team when we’re still trapped in this cell? I don’t know if you noticed but there’s nothing in here you can use to break out.”

Zero feels the hacker scan the room.

>>> i like a challenge

Zero swears under his breath. “Man, I swear if you weren’t actively trying to kill Blue right now, I might actually kinda like you. You’re _such_ an asshole.”

>>> thnx asshole

Then, a moment later:

>>> ur right. nuffing 2 break th door

>>> nuff 2 break u tho

“What?” Zero whispers with dread as his body is made to stand. Even then, he doesn’t completely understand his captor’s plans until his pain function comes back on. At full capacity.

Zero screams in agony. He can feel his injuries from the firefight flare with the highest intensity of pain possible. Every muscle aches from the force of the Bluebird’s cannons.

_nuff 2 break u_

The hacker plans to torture him, Zero realises.

Then, Zero’s only remaining arm is made to crook at the elbow, causing his finger to hover ominously above the open wound at the top of his bicep. _Kriff_. Blue had only put a few crude stitches in the wound. They were low on bacta since their last battle and Zero had insisted that they could make do until they returned to base - a stupid argument that Zero now really wishes he let Synox win - because it means that none of Zero’s recent injuries are healed in the slightest. There’s nothing between his jagged, dirty, fingernail and the shrapnel wound below.

“Aw, come on man,” Zero whimpers, anticipating the pain to come, as his own finger moves towards the wound.

The crew must realise at the same time because there’s an outpour of protest in his ear, and as his finger squeezes relentlessly between the stitches, he roars in pain.

“Why?” Zero manages to wheeze as the hacker delves further into the wound. “How does this…” he gasps in pain. “Help?”

>>> 2 get ur bf 2 cum play

>>> obv

Zero winces with more than just pain as he realises his captor’s plan. If he heard Blue screaming in agony, he’d do anything to put an end to it, even risking his own life to do so. The hacker is betting on Blue feeling the same way.

“He… won’t…come...” Zero gasps, looking in horror as more blood than he thought possible begins spurting out of him. Holy kark. The hacker must’ve pierced an artery. Could this day literally get any worse. “Blue… doesn’t…” Zero starts, but he can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He changes tact instead, “It won’t work. He’s smart. He’ll see through it.”

>>> o rly

Zero grimaces and tunes back into the argument in his earpiece, praying that Blue won’t fall for it. Blue is smart. He’ll realise that the hacker is trying to manipulate their feelings to get them to open the cell door. Blue will also know that the hacker can torture Zero all he likes, but he won’t actually risk killing him, or his entire mission is bust. Blue is smart. He’ll realise that they just have to let the hacker torture him. Blue will know that. Blue will -

“-he’s bleeding out, Sy, I don’t care if -”

“-if you step into that cell, Blue, you’re dead-”

“-I’m dead anyway if he dies-”

Zero groans, and the crew seem to fall silent at his protest. “You dramatic piece of kark, Blue,” he mutters as his finger finally falls out of the wound, most likely from blood loss rather than from actual intent from the hacker. He’s starting to feel _real_ woozy. “He wants you to come to me… Don’t…”

His crewmates might say more but it all becomes a kriffing mess in his head as his system starts blinking out, prioritising processes over others as it tries to cope with the sudden blood loss.

“I hope you realise,” Zero gasps out, “that if I pass out - or, you know, _die_ \- then you won’t get to kill Blue. Bit of a stalemate, no?”

>>> nt rly no

Zero realises exactly why the hacker is being so karking smug when the hacker overrides the emergency shutdown to make his eyes focus again and Zero sees the whole kriffing Bluebird crew standing on the other side of the glass doors.

>>> got em rite where i need em

Zero groans as the hacker makes his body walk - or rather, _stagger_ \- towards the cell door. Everything hurts, but he doesn’t know if any of his injuries hurt him as much as seeing Adnau’s worried face on the other side of the door.

“You karking idiot,” Zero mutters to Blue one last time. “He won’t kill me. Needs me to kill you. Don’t open that kriffing door. Please,” he begs, “I can take it. Don’t open that door.” Between his wavering vision, he sees Blue’s face scrunch up in what can only be distaste. He doesn’t like this either.

 _Walk away_ , Zero begs of him silently, even as his stomach twists in desperate yearning for Blue to come save him. To feel his fingers in his fur. To feel his code in his circuits. He just wants to curl up in his warm arms until the pain dissipates. He collapses against the cell, exhausted. His fingers curl against the glass as if they can physically melt the barrier between them and touch Blue’s freckles just one last time, and it’s only when he sees a telling twitch beneath Blue’s eyes that Zero realises that his captor allowed the movement. Of course he did. Because it plays right into his blasted _plan._

Zero hears the cell door swoosh open but it’s already too late; his body has spurred into action; right hand darting for something on the medical table.

“Oh no, no, no-” Zero mutters, dreading that his captor has somehow found a weapon of some sort, but what actually happens is that a kriffing bacta pack gets slapped over his bleeding wound.

Zero cringes in disbelief even the cool trickle of medicinal relief spreads through him. “Are you kriffing kidding-?!” but before he can finish processing the fact that there was a bacta pack in here the entire time and his crew’s intervention was entirely unwarranted, his hand has already grasped Synox’s throat.

Here’s the thing: it’s not like Zero has never wanted to strangle Synox. He’s an insufferable bore and a stickler for the rules and Zero has fantasized at least a dozen times about this very scenario - his hand wrapped around Synox’s throat, slowly squeezing life from him, lifting him just an inch or two from the ground until he feels utterly powerless… it’s a nice fantasy. He didn’t think he’d hate the reality so much though.

“Sorry, buddy,” Zero says with a wince as Synox really begins to struggle. Synox’s eyes - almost unbelievable given the circumstances - seem forgiving as he looks down at him. Okay, _pissed_ , and forgiving. But, still.

Zero’s actually beginning to get worried for Sy’s health when he feels the blissful and terrifying warmth of Aava’s lightsaber an inch away from his neck.

“Drop him,” she orders.

The hacker, seemingly deciding to live another day, eventually unfurls Zero’s fingers from around the clone trooper's neck. Synox splutters, attempting to catch his breath.

“Are you okay, buddy?” Zero asks, concerned, even as his eyes flicker over to Aava without his permission and he feels the hacker scan her for information.

Synox coughs but waves his hand in dismissal as he struggles to his feet. “All in the line of duty,” he croaks, at least a little sardonically, before staggering behind Aava.

Now that the hacker has moved his body to face Aava, Zero is happy to see that Blue is far from this - the other side of the room in fact - with his hand pressed against the door, as if he was ordered to leave but just couldn’t quite take the final step. The hacker’s focus is still very much on Aava though and the pulsing red light by his throat.

Zero wonders why his team don’t just back off and reseal the cell door until he realises that the hacker has somehow managed to breach that distance. Zero’s very body stands in the doorway, preventing closure of either side.

“Step back inside, intruder, or you will regret it,” Aava says smoothly and dangerously, and it makes Zero instantly feel more at home. Only an idiot would -

>>> nah

>>> boring

Zero takes a sharp intake of breath but is unable to warn them in time before Zero’s flesh fist is aiming squarely at the door sensor.

His body darts forward just as the door swooshes closed behind him.

“Ow,” Zero mutters without feeling. His pain may be turned off for now, but he definitely broke a bone or two in breaking the door controls.

Aava has stepped back with the sudden movement, apparently having been unable to carry out her own threat, and Zero comes to the terrifying realisation that the hacker’s plan worked, and he now stands on the same side of the door as Blue.

Zero swears under his breath. “Guys, you’ve gotta get out of here-”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence. Aava raises her hand and he is propelled back into the cell, pushed by her force magic. He shatters the glass with the movement and falls amid the shards back on the cell floor. He’s pissed because _boy_ is that gonna hurt later but it also gave his friends a chance to run and he’s so thankful he could cry.

“Urgh,” Zero groans, as the hacker forces his body to standing. He’s still drowsy from blood loss and although the pain is offline, it doesn’t mean his injuries are. He must look like a total disaster standing here in torn clothes, missing an arm, sporting multiple severe injuries, and modelling enough glass shards to look like a space cactus.

He hears his panicked crewmates in his ear and hopes they have a plan. He hopes they’ve at least kept the hacker distracted enough that they’ve found his location and are enroute to wherever this coward is lurking. He hopes it’s in this quadrant. He hopes they will get to give him a long, painful, death. And he really, really, hopes, that Aava doesn’t hesitate again before putting a lightsaber through his skull.

>>> aww how sweet she didn’t kill u

>>> she single?

“I swear to Vader,” Zero mutters, “you might be even more annoying than Blue.”

“You still moving, Zero?” Aava asks over the comms. She sounds remorseful and he really wishes she didn’t. “I didn’t mean to push you so hard, I just had to-”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m alive,” Zero dismisses, as the hacker finally gets him back on his feet. “I mean, I _feel_ ten different kinds of dead, but, you know, I’m breathing. Don’t hesitate again, Aava. I mean it.”

“I…” she pauses, long enough for the hacker to conduct a scan of the medbay outside the cell door. “I won’t.”

“Good,” he says with gravity, knowing that she'll follow through.

>>> u dun?

>>> gotta patch u up b4 round 3

Zero sighs, long and exasperated. “I hope your plan includes a nap. And four pints of blood.”

It’s then that Zero sees what the hacker has managed to find. Between the blood and the broken glass that litters his hand, sits a loaded needle.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me.”

“What is it?” he hears Blue ask, panicked. Zero’s eyes flutter closed at the sound of his voice, at the emotions the very sound of it brings bubbling to the surface. He sounds out of breath. Are they running somewhere? The ship is only so big. What the hell are they up to? Zero exhales shakily, opening his eyes again, and looks down as his hand prepares the shot.

“He found a stem. He's gonna shoot me up with adrenaline.”

“Kriff,” he hears Synox curse gruffly. “That’s not gonna help your condition.”

“You don’t think I know that?!” Zero exclaims as he helplessly watches the needle plunge into his side. He gasps as the effect starts spreading. “But I guess he’s only gotta keep me alive long enough to kill you guys… he don’t much care about what happens to me after.”

>>> damn str8

“Charming,” Zero mutters to his captor. And then, Zero’s body jumps to action, laced with the adrenaline, and literally pulls a cabinet off a wall. He’s about to comment on the needless extravagance when he sees what lies inside the broken cabinet…

“Blue,” Zero says, calmly and sickly sweet, as his flesh arm begins tearing at the package. “Please tell me that all you bought me for Life Day was a dummy repulsor fist made from gummy bears and raindrops incapable of hurting a single living creature?”

“Wha…?” Blue starts, and then must realise exactly where Zero is and exactly what the hacker must have found.

“Ummhmm,” Zero confirms, with a bizarre mix of amusement and dread.

Blue whines and admits, “I bought you a high grade repulsor fist with rapid fire capabilities and… maybe a built-in flame thrower.”

“Of course you did,” Zero answers bittersweetly. “Babe, if it was any other time, I’d kriffing love you…” he says because despite the circumstances, he’s practically swooning over the high grade personalised weapon that his wrecked flesh hand is currently attaching to his body. “ _Force_ , it’s pretty,” he mutters, as the shiny metal glints under the white light of the medbay in all it’s deadly powerful glory, and he doesn't know if he’s actually this excited about the new weapon or if it’s the kriffing adrenaline making his heart pound a mile a minute. Probably both. “Ugh, so pretty. Oh, Adnau, I might love you anyway, but it would be so much better if my present was being used to kill this asshole and not…” he trails off, having only just processed the last part of Blue's description. “Wait... did you say _flamethrower_?!”

The hacker completes the fitting and Zero watches with barely suppressed awe as the manuals flit through his head as his programme rapidly accepts the new mechanical arm. And, oh, it even _feels_ like Blue. It's beautiful and perfect and he wants to kiss the man responsible with every fibre of his being.

“I’m glad you like it,” Blue whispers.

The world suddenly seems very small, very quiet, as if the entirety of it fades away to just Blue’s timid voice. Zero’s eyes close and he feels a single tear slip out.

“Oh baby,” he says, not even caring about the errant petname. “I love it. I love it so much.” No one else would know, or understand, just how much he loves fire and think to give it to him. It’s the sweetest present. But he’s so pissed that he wasn’t the one that opened it, that he couldn’t see Blue’s face afterwards, that Blue isn’t here, right now, fitting it, and touching him, and complaining that the blaster function isn’t nearly as good as the old model and that fire is a primitive weapon and how Zero is basically just a caveman and...

Zero’s eyes are still closed when he hears the repulsor fist start up. “But I really wish, just once, that you wouldn't buy Life Day presents in advance.”

>>> ding ding ding

>>> round 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe that this was originally only going to be three chapters long and I was going to miss out on all this additional space angst. I don't know what I was thinking.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look. In my defence, I _did_ say at the beginning of this adventure that I was in all likelihood going to fuck up my "once a week" update schedule. On the bright side, you've only got to put up with me for one more chapter (I can now also confirm that it's not going above a Teen rating... probably because I am writing zeblue porn elsewhere)
> 
> Also, in addition to not knowing how technology works in Star Wars, I also have no idea how the Bluebird is structured and I've probably invented rooms that don't exist.

Zero’s just about had it with this hacker. Sure, the guy’s got chops. He kinda admired the dude at first for just how ruthless he was but that was before he put Zero through the wringer and still somehow expected his body to function. At a certain point, Zero’s body _is_ just going to give out on them both. That’s a fact. Despite the bacta patch on his shoulder stemming the bleeding, Zero still has cracked ribs from the force of the Bluebird’s stun, fractured fingers from breaking the cell door panel, and numerous incisions from the shattered glass door - not to mention the various wounds he had gained in the initial battle and the additional and entirely needless blood loss that the hacker forced upon him afterwards. When the stem shot wears off, Zero knows he’s going to drop like a stone, and that’s only if his heart doesn’t give out from the strain first. He’s a dead man. The hacker has just wagered that he can complete his mission first.

Time is now of the essence and Zero is torn between doing all he can to slow his captor down - distract him with chatter and misdirect him the best he can - or encourage his haste in the hopes that he will slip up in his panic and give his crew the chance they need to take him down. Either way, distraction is probably key. He doesn’t know what the Bluebird crew have planned, if they’re anywhere near the hacker’s base of operations, or if they’ve changed plans entirely, but he trusts them to get the job done whether or not he’ll still be alive to see it.

The hacker seems almost as enamoured with the new cybernetic arm as Zero is; he can see the guy lingering over some of the specifications even as he raids the rest of the medbay, picking out further weapons. He still knows _nothing_ about his hacker and as his team is currently radio silent - hopefully doing something secret and deadly - now seems like a good time to pry out some answers.

“Pretty sexy piece of equipment, huh?” Zero says - in theory about the arm, but also leaving it open to interpretation. “You ever handle something like this before?”

>>> r u …. FLIRTING w/ me?

The hacker actually pauses; Zero’s fingers are hovering over unexamined surgical equipment. Zero takes a moment to appreciate just how good his distraction game is that he's already got the hacker halting in his movements.

“What can I say? I find bloodthirsty assholes a turn on.”

>>> u wont distract me

The hacker purposefully makes Zero’s hands resume rifling through drawers.

“I know,” Zero says sincerely, “You’re too good for that. I was serious though. About if you’ve spliced a cyborg before. You seem to know what you’re doing.”

The hacker brandishes a surgical knife in Zero’s hands, as if showing off his prize, before making Zero bend and strap it to his ankle between what little remains of his clothes and his boots.

>>> i aint no n00b

“Yeah, I can see that,” Zero admits, as the hacker makes him stride towards the door. Locked. But now, of course, Zero has a repulsor fist to blast it out the sky.

His arm raises. A little taste of Blue surges through his code. And then, the shot fires and the security panel is no more. The door slides open.

“I just mean,” Zero says, attempting to keep their conversation going despite the hacker’s haste. “That it’s a pretty specialised skill. Where’d you go about learning such a thing?”

>>> non of ur bsnss

“Aw come on man,” Zero begs as the elevator takes them to the main floor of the ship, “From one techie to another, how’d you do it?”

He’s banking on the hacker wanting to show off his skills just as much as Zero would. You don’t get to be this good without an ego, and an ego like that always needs stroking.

“I should at least know the name of the person who finally got me pwned, how else will your fellow scum know who to thank when they find my lifeless corpse?”

>>> the rebels no who i am

>>> its in my code

Huh. Zero didn't find any such thing when he had a quick scan of the intruder's code, but if the hacker’s name is embedded in it somewhere, even somewhere obscure, then that means - Zero thinks, with a little bubble of hope - that Blue must have found it. He suppresses the smile that threatens to break through.

“Is that so? You and them are buddies then? How’s that work?”

They’re walking down the main corridor now, the hacker stopping to scan every room, repulsor fist raised at the ready.

>>> credits mostly

Zero wants to scream with joy. Whether the hacker knows it or not, he’s just given away his motivation, and if Blue was listening in - which Zero can only hope that he was - then he’s left himself open for manipulation. If this is just about _money_ then Blue can buy him off. It’s such a blindingly simple solution that Zero dare not hope but-

>>> n sumtimes we share enmies

Zero’s hope extinguishes, fast and cruel. “And Blue is your enemy?” he asks numbly. “He’s a _kid_ ,” he says, throwing the word back at the hacker. “What could he have possibly done to you?”

>>> killed mine

“Wait… _what_?!” Zero exclaims before he’s even finished processing the thought. Blue can’t have killed children. He _can’t._ The hacker can’t mean by his own hand, and he can’t possibly mean children. Blue doesn’t kill children. Blue _loves_ children… okay, in a roundabout sort of way, but he _does_. Zero’s seen him defend the importance of _Synox & Friends_ to people so terrifying that even Zero found it hard to sleep at night afterwards.

>>> not so cute now, is he?

Zero scowls behind his helmet. It’s a cheap shot. The hacker could easily be lying about his motivation. They’re running out of rooms to search down here on the main deck, which means the crew are in hiding, or possibly in the gunnery… or in the main cockpit that lies ahead of them in unnatural darkness. The hacker could just be angry and scared and lashing out, or masterfully spinning lies to put his puppet even more on edge.

And, it works. Zero doesn’t know what he’s more scared of: that Blue’s hiding in the dark cockpit ahead of them - defenceless and scared and about to be killed by his own bodyguard - or the possibility that Blue once killed someone’s _children_. How dare the hacker make him doubt this. Doubt Blue. How karking _dare_ he -

They drop out of hyperdrive.

 _Kriff_.

Someone’s in that cockpit. You can’t do that move unless someone’s in the cockpit.

>>> wat r they doing?

>>> y hav we stopped

>>> where r we?

 _They’ve found you_ , Zero hopes, _Blue’s reverse tracker worked and they’ve found you_ , but he doesn’t know for sure, and he sure as hell isn’t about to tell the hacker as much.

“I don’t know…” Zero murmurs, hoping it’s loud enough to give whoever’s in the cockpit enough warning to get into a defensive position. His body is still thrumming with artificial adrenaline and his new, much deadlier repulsor fist, is pointed straight at the cockpit as the hacker makes his body march towards the open door.

 _Were they smart enough to set a trap?_ Zero wonders as the hacker scans the room and comes up empty. But even if they have, one look at that display in the cockpit will tell the hacker exactly where they are and give him the headstart he needs to get out of whatever hole he’s hiding in. That doesn’t seem like something Blue would allow to happen…. which means that it must be a _deadly_ trap.

Panic rises in Zero’s throat at the thought of dying. It’s what he’s been begging them to do this whole time but somehow he’s still not ready for it to end here and now, and as the hacker makes him step over the threshold, Zero’s eyes squeeze shut, waiting for the explosion to come.

***

Zero opens his eyes. He’s alive. For the second time that day, he’s surprised at the fact. If he does in fact survive this entire ordeal, he thinks, as the hacker runs scan after scan on the cockpit, clearly as sceptical of the fact as Zero is, then he’s going to have a vacation. Beach, sun, cocktails… the whole shebang. Blue will get horrendously sunburnt and complain about the sand getting in his tech and Zero will love every minute of it.

>>> how did they turn off hyperdrive remotely?

>>> how are they navigating _now_?

In his panic, the hacker has apparently forgotten he’s meant to have the personality and spelling ability of a fourteen year old boy. Zero can’t say he’s sad to see the facade go.

“Because Blue is much smarter than anyone ever takes him for.”

>>> he’s rewired it

“He’s rewired it,” Zero repeats in awe, just as the hacker finally makes his fingers pry off the navigation panel to witness the evidence of the splice. Not even a single display is working in here. The hacker has no idea where the crew are or where the controls have been rerouted to.

The hacker begins running scans and pulling up ship specifications, presumably trying to work out where Blue has set the navigation controls to, before he suddenly freezes in his ministrations.

Zero realises a second afterwards why - there’s a faint humming sound coming from behind them.

Zero’s body turns to see a red force field shimmering in the doorway.

>>> its a trap

“It’s a trap,” Zero repeats, but with _delight_.

>>> no need to sound so karking _cheery_

>>> i can blast that thing to hell

>>> n get us rite outta here

The hacker raises Zero’s arm to the door panel, intending to blast it to hell, but in the split second it takes to power up, Zero realises that this all too easy and there’s only one reason why: it’s because Blue _wants_ the hacker to zap the panel. This is the real trap, Zero realises. It makes sense. Blue’s cornered him, lulled him into a false sense of security, and now imbued him with haste. Blue’s smart enough to rig an explosion or programme the field to repel fire or something equally as brilliant and deadly but if this is really it then...

“Blue-” he begins, and he doesn’t know if he’s mad at Blue for deciding to kill him or proud of him for doing it, but he’s pretty sure his voice is wracked with both those and more as he tries to condense his tumultuous feelings in what may be his last few seconds to live. What could he even say? _You’re a genius, I love you, screw you, I wished I kissed you, did you really kill those children, I hope you get to string this hacker up by his balls, you said you wouldn’t give up on me you karking traitor, look after yourself, I love you, I’m so lucky I knew you, I love you, I can’t believe you finally listened to me, I love-_

“I know,” Blue whispers softly, but it’s not through the comm, it sounds like it’s from somewhere else; somewhere close by.

The hacker begins to turn towards the voice, but it’s too late, the blast already having left the device, and Zero only has seconds to wonder - _Know_ what _?! What does he know?_ \- before everything returns, once more, to darkness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rocks up four months late with a POV switch* soooooo this is awkward
> 
> sorry y'all, after joking about life throwing me curveballs in the intro to Chap 3, karma was a bitch and actually threw me, like, a dozen curveballs... so, sorry, but I'm back! with an extra chapter! I thought you might like Blue's POV for some extra H before we dive into that sweet, sweet, C.
> 
> I'm genuinely sorry I left you all hanging. Your happy ending should be here in a couple of days, a week at most, unless... I'm jinxing it again. Am I jinxing it??? 
> 
> OH hell
> 
> Thanks for your patience x

Blue watches Zero fall to the floor of the engine room and his heart falls with him. Shooting Zero with a stun of that magnitude was a risk given his multiple injuries but it’s not like the hacker had left him much choice. Blue was already wracked with enough guilt over the situation - allowing Zero to get hacked in the first place, then contemplating leaving him, then hitting him with the blast from the Bluebird, then his failure to evict the hacker, and _then_ neglecting to restrain Zero just because he let himself be distracted by the sight of Zero being all cute and vulnerable and mostly naked and now... this. He didn’t know it was possible to feel this guilty about _anything_ , but now he's wracked with it, he finds he doesn’t like it one bit.

Blue jumps down from the hatch above the engine room and is beside Zero before his body even hits the floor. Hesitantly, he reaches down and cradles his helmet between his hands. The black visor betrays nothing. The hacker’s crude “ _PWND”_ has disappeared from across the screen but there’s also no emojis to reassure Blue of Zero’s return. It’s just… blank. Blue swallows down the sudden fear that takes ahold of him.

Synox is a step behind him, taking his pulse on his exposed wrist. “I told you it would be too much-”

“And I told you he could take it,” Aava parries.

“Is he okay?” Blue asks desperately, looking between them for an answer.

“He’s got a pulse.”

“That’s not an answer, Synox.”

Synox sighs in annoyance but doesn’t care to expand his answer. Blue clenches his fist and reiterates, “I want the best medicare we can get him on this karkhole of a planet, you understand me?”

“Yes, Minister,” Synox says, sarcastically enough that Blue would pull him up on it in any other situation. “So you’ve said. Many times.”

Blue feels a gentle squeeze on his shoulder and looks up from Zero’s unmoving body to Aava’s concerned frown. “We’ll make sure he’s looked after, sweetheart. We’ve already got medics waiting for us at the spaceport.”

Synox grumbles as he routinely tends to the wounds that he can access and Blue watches him and just knows that more complaints are inbound.

“What?” Blue challenges before Synox can voice them.

“Oh, nothing Minister Blue. Just that nothing says ‘undercover infiltration’ better than a fleet of specialised Empire personnel standing to attention on a backwater spaceport.”

“Leave him be, Sy.”

“Oh yeah, never mind me, just pointing out a vital flaw in our plan-”

“We’ll get the hacker,” Blue interrupts in a tone that brooks no arguments. “We’ll get Margo and her cronies. I will string that old lady up by her guts if its the last thing I do-”

“You’re staying behind,” Aava says firmly.

“Like hell I am. She took _Zero-_ ”

“To get to _you_ , dumbass,” Aava says sardonically, and she sounds so much like Zero for a minute that Blue can’t help but look down at his lifeless body wistfully. He never thought he’d miss Zero sassing him every minute of every day, but turns out he misses every single thing about him when he’s suddenly denied it. He swears when this hacker is hanging, and Zero has recovered, Blue is taking them on a vacation far, far, away from this backwater planet and the rebel scum that cling to it.

“Aava’s right,” Synox says. “It’s completely unnecessary for you to-”

“Sy, Sy, Sy,” Blue tuts, “when have you _ever_ known that to stop me? I’m going. With the biggest, deadliest, blaster I can find. End of discussion. Are we in atmo yet?”

Synox rolls his eyes but doesn’t comment on the fact that Blue isn’t going to leave Zero long enough to check the datapad that’s literally two inches behind him to check their flight path for himself.

“Approaching now,” he reports. “ETA twenty minutes.”

“You hear that?” Blue says, leaning down to whisper to Zero. Numbly, he realises that his hand has subsciously fallen across Zero’s chest, and he takes a moment to close his eyes and feel the weak but gentle pulsing of Zero’s heart beneath his palm; reassuring. “Just hold on for twenty more minutes, okay? Just twenty minutes, then we can get you fixed up, and you can tell me all the embarrassing confessions you were just gonna tell me, okay?”

A tear falls, unbidden, but Blue can’t find it within himself to care. His feelings for Zero must have become painfully apparent throughout this entire ordeal. If Aava and Synox didn’t know about his pathetic crush beforehand, then they definitely did now. He lowers his forehead to Zero’s helmet and breathes in the closeness, just for a moment, as if he can delude himself into thinking Zero’s eyes are open behind the visor, and looking at him as indulgently as ever. Blue recalls the last time he was this close, the hesitation he had in leaving him in the cell, and how desperately he wanted to kiss him…

But he can’t think of that now.

He rises, hardened, and brushes the lint from his duster with the back of his hand. “Time to visit an old lady and pay my respects.”

An awkward silence meets his gritty declaration.

“What?” Blue asks offended, looking between the two quizzical - amused? - faces either side of him. “I’m going to kill the hacker - was that not clear? My respects aren’t _nice_. I don’t like her. She’s going to pay with her _life_... How is that not clear? I thought it was clear.”

***

They don’t get there in time. Margo must have had some warning, or perhaps just had enough sense to flee when Zero went down for the second time.

She was here recently. There is still a warm cup of caf on the desk beside a dusty imprint of a datapad recently removed.

There aren’t even any goons here to take down. Just an empty kriffing warehouse.

Blue stares at the mocking note on the desk - “l8r losers xxx” - for a good solid minute before the anguish of the day and the utter injustice of it stacks up and he suddenly screams in rage, wiping his arm across the desk, sending caf and technology and papers flying.

All this _pain_. All this emotional… turmoil. And he doesn’t even get the catharsis of butchering the person responsible. Zero is lying in a hospital, immersed in bacta, half-naked, and half-broken, and alone, and she… _she_...

“‘ _Later losers_ ,’” Aava reads from the now-caf-stained note on the floor. She huffs with amusement. “Nice. I hope I’m still making grown men have temper tantrums when I’m seventy-four-”

“Seventy- _five_ ,” Blue corrects with a glare. “And before you get all chummy, you might want to remember that she nearly killed Zero-”

Aava snorts with amusement and Blue resists the urge to put the blaster straight through her skull. “ _Please_ , Zero nearly killed Zero. If he had just agreed to kill you like any sensible person would’ve, then he’d be perfectly safe, so, _really_ , if you’re looking for someone to blame…”

Blue cringes. He knows every injury inflicted on Zero is ultimately his fault and he doesn’t welcome the reminder. He’s feeling guilty enough as it is, thank you very much.

“...it’s that dumbass,” she concludes.

“What?”

“Zero,” she says, slowly and with emphasis. “If he didn’t have such a massive crush on you that he was literally willing to tear himself apart to protect you-”

“He’s just… good at his job,” Blue says despondently, trying to distract himself by kicking the wreckage with his boot, looking for a lead. “He doesn’t even like me most days.”

Aava sighs, like she’s bored, or like she’s thoroughly disappointed in him… Blue has never been able to tell the difference. Blue distantly hears a thudding noise and turns to see Synox literally banging his head against the wall. Surely that can’t be good for his helmet.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Aava says pointedly. “Margo’s too smart to have left any decent clues behind. At least she won’t be able to cause too much trouble with just a datapad and whatever else she managed to scrounge from this dump. We might as well destroy her tech, crush the signal that's puppeteering Zero, and get out of here. Go see how your boy’s getting on.”

Blue frowns at Aava’s unusual reluctance. Admittedly, he aches to see Zero. But… “She needs to pay for what she’s done, Aava. I can’t just… let her go.”

Aava shrugs, attempting to look indifferent but Blue knows her well enough now to know that’s not the case. “I get that you want revenge, I do, but you’ve gotta respect her for playing such a good game. Zero sure did. That kind of hacking… it’s pretty masterful. Kind of a specialised skill set, wouldn’t you say?”

Blue narrows his eyes. “What are you saying?”

“Well, for one thing, I get very little enjoyment out of butchering _grandmothers_ -”

“And?” Blue pushes impatiently.

“For another, if you let her live another day, it means you’d actually be able to ask her _how_.”

Blue bristles. The code itself was rudimentary but _how_ she spliced such an advanced cyborg in the first place was… well. It shouldn’t have been possible. The software that Zero runs is the highest grade tech, checked and updated routinely by Blue himself… it ought to be impossible to hack.

“And if you know _how_ then you’d be able to prevent…”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Blue says, putting the pieces together. Aava makes a fair point. As much as Blue wants to personally hunt Margo across the galaxy and give her the most painful, humiliating death possible, Aava makes a kriffing good point.

Right now - although he wouldn’t admit it to anyone - Blue doesn’t know how to stop this from happening again. As soon as they destroy the signal in this warehouse, Zero will be Zero again, but there’s nothing to say Margo couldn't set up base elsewhere and repeat her twisted little game. Blue’s been going over and over it for the last twenty four hours and still can’t work out how Margo spliced Zero. Which means… this could happen again. Blue winces, imagining all of this happening over and over again, unable to stop it, until Zero finally stops listening to him and pulls the plug…

Unacceptable.

Blue could kill Margo and it would feel so good, so _righteous_ , but ultimately her death wouldn’t prevent this from happening again. Her knowledge has likely already been passed on.

Knowledge that _he_ desperately needs so he can reverse-engineer her little gambit and sleep soundly at night, knowing that Zero is safe from such underhanded attacks.

Blue mulls all this over, and then concludes, “You’re suggesting that instead of us tracking down and _killing_ Margo right this second, we put her on the Empire’s watchlist, let the uniforms bring her in and _torture_ the information we need out of her.” He tilts his head while he considers this outcome. He imagines the torture, he imagines _himself_ doing the torture, and finds he’s amenable. “I could get on board with that.”

Aava sighs and this time she _definitely_ sounds disappointed. “I didn’t say _torture_. You could bribe her, charm her, trick her…”

“Nah,” Blue says, shouldering his blaster and heading for the door. “She hurt Zero. Torture’s good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay we got a teensy bit of plot stuff to wrap up next chapter but it's mostly well-deserved cuddles, I swear! thanks again for sticking with me


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter is nearly double the length of the others. probably because I felt bad that literally half of it was taken up with more angst. ha. sorry. but did you honestly expect things between these two to go smoothly???

It feels like basking in the sunshine, like cuddling a fluffy space kitten, like snuggling back under the covers because it’s the weekend… it’s just a real, good, feeling.

Drugs.

It’s definitely drugs.

Zero internally groans, but seems to fail at actually producing the sound. If he’s this high (like, super high) then it’s probably for really unfun reasons.

Then, comes the second stage of waking up, and yeah, he was right, remembering is a lot less fun. He remembers the battle, and the hacker takeover, and the blast from the Bluebird, and the relentless pseudo-self-harm in pursuit of Blue, and then… oh, the trap. Blue’s clever trap. Which clearly had the side-effect of making Zero feel like he’d been hit by a truck. Literally everything hurts. Everything. His pinky toe hurts, his eyebrow hurts, his spleen hurts. If it exists, it hurts. Well… _aches,_ he supposes,as the drugs are doing a pretty good job of hiding the hurt.

Then, past the hurt, he feels the gross _squidge_ of bacta. He internally winces, and again, doesn’t know if it makes an appearance in the physical or not. He hates bacta. Slimy and gross. It’s in, like, patches or something across his body. Which makes sense, ‘cos he’s got so many electronics in him that submerging him in a bacta tank would be kriffing stupid. But why do the _patches_ have to be just as slimy? What kind of karked up science...

And then…

Then…

He recognises something that makes everything else fade into insignificance.

There’s a hand in his.

Zero’s pretty sure he’s only covered in strips of fabric while lying in what he assumes is a hospital bed, and maybe before all this karking drama, he’d be embarrassed about anyone seeing his real face, his real body, but he spent the last day dragging his near-carcass around the Bluebird just as naked but 100% more gross and 1000% more murderous, so this definitely has to be an improvement.

His fingers twitch experimentally. It's enough to elicit a little gasp from the handholder. Zero smiles softly to himself. There’s only one person who would make a sound so soft but so indignant. A moment later, his suspicions are confirmed when Blue whispers his name - his _real_ name - in relief, and Zero feels a sudden shift in movement. (And in his heart, the traitorous thing)

Zero tries really hard to open his eyes, or otherwise communicate to Blue that he’s okay, but it takes more strength than he thought possible. He groans in frustration as he tries to function, and then once again in pain as he tries to sit up, despite the warning hand pressed gently against his chest -

“You’ll hurt your back-”

Zero swats away Blue’s concern. He’s relieved he still possesses the strength to do that at least. Once he’s sat up, he immediately sags against the pillow, exhausted from even that tiny movement.

“0ni, you’re-”

“Fine,” Zero cuts in, because it’s probably true.

“ _Stubborn.”_

“Learnt it from the best,” Zero quips. He finally manages to open his eyes and for a minute he sees nothing but blinding light. _Hey_ , he thinks, _maybe I did actually go to heaven_. And then, blue glasses and orange hair swim into the whiteness and it feels more like heaven than it has any right to be. His heart flutters madly at the sight of Blue, however blurry. 

“Hey,” Zero says softly, and he doesn’t care how sappy it sounds with no helmet to hide his emotions, especially when Blue responds in kind with words just as soft; his hand falling gently back atop of his.

Blue’s coming more into focus now; all freckles and frowns. It’s very cute.

Zero struggles to keep on track but he’s not gonna let himself get distracted like last time, and forces himself to ask the important questions - “He dead? We out of danger?”

Blue furrows his brow, like he’s confused, and then, “Oh! The hacker. Margo. Uh, not dead yet. She… well, they’re gonna bring her in. But we destroyed her lab. You’re safe. For now.”

Zero raises his eyebrow at the change of pronoun. It makes sense. The hacker probably had the persona of a teenage boy precisely so that people like Zero would make the assumptions that he did. Smart lady. Smart, but still a dick. “But you know who she is?”

Blue huffs, like, _of course he knows who she is._

“Good,” Zero infers, cutting off what he’s sure would’ve been a five minute lecture on just how clever Blue is for identifying the hacker. “Then you can tell me exactly how you killed her children.”

Blue suddenly stills, paling to an impossible shade of white. He wasn’t expecting that. Good. Blue swallows nervously. Sweat appears on his brow. It suddenly looks like Blue wants to be anywhere else but here.

A deep instinct within Zero wants to reach out, to reassure Blue that it’s okay… but the hacker laid a pretty heavy accusation against Blue, and he needs to know before this - whatever _this_ is - goes any further, if there’s any truth in the accusation. There’s a lot of mysteries in both of their pasts, but he’s no longer sure if he’s okay with that.

“It’s technically a… _technicality_ ,” Blue starts, and Zero resists the urge to rally his battered body into reaching across and strangling the man.

“ _Blue_ ,” Zero scolds.

Blue starts squirming like Zero knew he would and another wave of relief hits him that he still gets to see this, however predictable Blue is, however mundane this routine used to feel, it’s now… different. Special. The warm and fuzzy feeling meets Zero’s genuine anger and it makes him feel grossly nauseous.

“Fine,” Blue says, but he folds his arms and pouts like a toddler as he confesses to whatever horrendous tale is about to be told. “ _Technically_ ,” he starts and Zero nearly punches his lights out again, “It was her _grand_ children, and _technically_ , it was Synox’s idea to…”

“ _BLUE_.”

“FINE,” he huffs. “So, _Synox & Friends_ is propaganda, right? Good propaganda. _Excellent_ propaganda if I say so my-” Blue falls silent at Zero’s glare and then coughs to cover the awkwardness. “Yes, so it made sense to try to funnel that youthful enthusiasm into _practical_ pursuits… for… the... Empire.”

Zero takes a moment, because it takes a moment, and then, “...are you saying ‘child army’ because it sounds like-”

“ _Technically,”_ Blue says with a finger raised, “It was a children’s pre-training training academy… ‘A fun summer camp for Synox fans!’” Blue says like he’s reciting the kriffing brochure.

Zero’s fist actually clenches this time, his broken fingers make a protest somewhere underneath all the drugs and all the rage. “A ‘fun summer camp’ that _kills_ children?”

“There was a… now, I don’t want to say _mistake_ \- let’s say a _miscalculation_ -”

“I swear to god Blue-”

“In which a unit-”

“A ‘ _unit_ ’?!”

“Team! A fun summer team! Got flown into a nearby rebel skirmish that maybe, in retrospect, was not… very skirmishy. Maybe some of them got into the crosshairs, maybe some of the casualties were Margo’s grandchildren, maybe the parents of said grandchildren got themselves involved… and maybe, I suppose, if someone was to sit down and try to pin this single _miscalculation_ on a single person like Margo did… well, it would make sense that that person was me.”

By the time Blue has finished this dire explanation, Zero is just about ready to hit something, despite the unholy pain it would undoubtedly cause him. He breathes, very deeply, and very purposefully, as if it might dispel his anger. “Propaganda is one thing, Blue, but you don’t _conscript_ children into _war_ -”

“They weren’t ‘ _conscripted_ -’”

“They may as well have been!” Zero shouts.

Blue shrinks back in his bedside chair, hand slipping out of Zero’s, and Zero finally hears himself - how angry and forceful he sounds - and, begrudgingly, he knows that although Blue was complicit in this and is certainly Not A Good Guy™ by any definition… he probably doesn’t deserve the full assault of his rage; not today; not after all they’ve been through. Blue is the only reason why they’re both even alive right now.

Blue’s cavalier attitude probably also stems from ignorance; he won’t understand _why_ this strikes such a nerve with Zero. They do shady stuff every single day. Zero _kills people for money_ , for kark’s sake, but it’s not… it’s not the _same_ , and he doesn’t know how to explain this monumental difference to someone so purposefully obtuse.

He looks down at his clenched hand; bandaged, and broken, but still functioning, just like he was designed to do. He brings it to his chest and nurses it gently, while he tries to explain, “They, uh, started carving up my body for upgrades when I was eight-years-old.”

He feels Blue’s interest intensify against his bowed head, but it takes Zero embarrassingly long to conjure the courage to meet his eye. But, he does, and then he takes a deep breath and gives Blue the byline - “Children can’t give consent.”

Blue looks away, but not before Zero sees the shame reflected in his eyes. “I know,” Blue whispers, and it sounds heavy with regret. “I swear, I never intended for them to get hurt. It was just a summer camp… outdoor games, tech classes, even a chance for the children to learn a string instrument so they could play the theme song at the end of the programme…” he trails off with a bittersweet smile. “I cancelled the camp as soon as I heard about the battle. Every iteration of it, across the galaxy.”

Zero looks at Blue’s forlorn face - as guilty as he’s ever seen it - and slowly and purposefully retakes his hand. “Okay.”

Blue smiles, relieved. “Okay?”

“Yeah, man. I get it. You screwed up. People got hurt. It happens.”

Blue makes an indignant whine. “But it _shouldn’t_ have happened. I should have overseen the camp operations myself, kept tabs on the programme so I would have seen something like that coming…”

He keeps talking but that particular phrasing causes a bittersweet smile to come to Zero's face. Blue had blamed himself for failing to predict the hacker too. Blue feels guilty for not foreseeing every single outcome of everything that he does. Zero wonders how long those deaths had been weighing on his mind. “How come I never heard about this training camp?” Zero asks with sudden realisation, cutting Blue’s apologises short.

Blue shrugs, some of his cockiness returning. “I’m the Propaganda Minister, you think I can’t hide a scandal when I need to?”

Zero snorts. “Man, zero to sixty in record time. Can we go back to you being apologetic? It was real refreshing for a change-”

“I didn't want you to know, okay?” Blue babbles, “I didn't want you looking at me like…” he trails off, looking down forlornly at their joined hands, “well, I guess like you just looked at me.”

Zero squeezes Blue’s hand to get his attention. “I didn’t think you, uh, cared too much about my opinion. About what I _think_.”

“I…” Blue’s sentence seems to disappear before he even starts. He’s looking down at their hands again, but this time, not guiltily. Zero has no idea what’s going through that mind until Blue’s thumb slowly and deliberately trails across the back of Zero’s flesh hand.

Zero’s breath catches. His heart pounds. He feels dizzy. He daren’t hope but…

“I thought I lost you today,” Blue says, completely derailing whatever it was they were talking about. He chuckles a dry laugh that doesn’t sound humorous at all. “More than once.”

“Yeah,” Zero says, remembering how to breathe, how to _speak_ , “Uh, same here. Not really how I like my Tuesdays-”

“And it would’ve been my _fault-_ ”

“No,” Zero interjects firmly. “It-”

“You should hate me,” Blue interrupts. “Especially now you know _why_ you were targeted. But you didn’t let her get anywhere near me. You had no reason to trust me. But you still did _that_ -” his hand hovers over the grievous wound in his arm - “and more to protect me. And you said some _things_...that… that I don’t know how to...” Blue sighs, and he breaks eye contact, apparently no longer able to look at the hideous sight in front of him. “I’d _kill_ to know what you're thinking.”

Zero watches his adam’s apple bob as he swallows, his slight frame perfectly silhouetted against the bright light of the private med bay. He might just be the prettiest man in the galaxy. And what is he to him? A disfigured, snarky, gank built to be a murderbot. He loves Blue, he does, his heart does somersaults every time he even looks at the guy… but there’s nothing of value in him that Blue could find to love. Nothing.

Zero closes his eyes and weighs up the possible futures that could spin from this; calculating if it’s worth professing his feelings if he’s only going to get shot down; or if, by some miracle, Blue returns his feelings but then realises his mistake only days into their changed relationship… every way he plays it, there’s a chance his confession could ruin them.

But, there’s a warm hand in his, and it feels a little like hope.

Behind closed eyelids, the day comes back to him in bits and pieces; every word Blue uttered that made Zero feel safe, every conflicted expression that crossed his face, the quiet moment in the cell when it was just him and Blue and how much he ached to kiss him, the beautiful and deadly flamethrower Blue bought him for Lifeday, and his face when Zero was bleeding out and begging Blue to flee but he… there was that little twitch beneath his eye… like he… he...

_I’m not giving up on you, you fruitcake._

“I, uh,” Zero starts, and he opens his eyes just in time to see Blue’s attention snap right back to him. Man, those eyes really were a ridiculous shade of blue. Zero swallows his nerves and tries again, “I want to thank you for not pulling the plug on me when you probably shoud’ve. If you really want to know what I’m thinking, I guess it’s just that…” Zero takes a deep, steadying breath, and dares to move his thumb ever so slightly in Blue’s hand. The movement elicits a little hitch in breath which gives him the courage to continue. “I’ve never known anyone _care_ so much. About _me_. And I don’t know why you... But I’m grateful.” He clears his throat. “You’re a pretty cool guy.”

“Oh,” Blue says, and somehow that single syllable carries with it audible disappointment. Zero clearly missed the mark somehow.

“I mean you’re still an insufferable smartass, far too egotistical for your own good, as evidenced by the whole… camp thing,” he says with a wave of his hand, “and the fact that you’re blaming this whole hacker thing on, I dunno, your failure to overanalyse every bit of code that’s ever passed through me-” Blue makes some kind of babbling injection that’s easy enough to talk over “-like how dare anyone outsmart you, but apparently I’m in love with you anyway, so what does that say about me I don’t even-”

“What?” Blue squeaks.

And, oh, okay, it looks like Zero confessed his feelings, whether he meant to or not. Cool. Thanks, drugs. Real cool of you.

“Uh,” Zero says eloquently. Blue looks like he’s about to pass out. Zero feels about the same.

“You…” Blue begins. It looks like he's short-circuited or something.

They're both just staring at each other, speechless, like the pathetic morons they are.

“Sorry?” Zero tries when it looks like movement is still a far off concept for Blue.

“No,” Blue murmurs nonsensically. Zero's heart beats wildly as his mind races to fill in the blanks - no, _what_? No, I don't like you? No, I'm not interested? No… thank you???

Blue shakes his head and then reaches out with a cautious hand towards him. ”No,” he says softly, “Don't be...sorry.”

Zero's eyes flutter closed as the meaning sinks in and Blue's palm comes to rest against his cheek; a welcome touch between the fur, bruises, and bacta patches that litter his skin. He can feel Blue radiating warmth, like the trickle of drugs in his veins.

The next thing he knows, Blue's entire forehead is pressed against his, and Zero makes an embarrassing kind of strangled noise at the relief and pain it immediately sends through him. Blue moves to pull away, an apology on his lips, but before he can even contemplate moving, Zero brings his hand up to Blue's neck, holding him in place.

He breathes a shaky sigh. He's actually doing this. His mangled mechanical hand is actually curled into Blue's soft hair and it feels _magnificent_. He can feel Blue exhaling against his face; his real one, not his visor, and it feels so good he could cry. He closes his eyes and indulges in running a couple rudimentary tests just to feel Blue's code running through him, no intruder in sight.

“Thank you,” he whispers against Blue's skin, “Thank you for looking after me.”

He feels Blue's soft palm gently run down his cheek and Zero's eyes flicker open to watch him. He's never seen him this up close before and there's a lot of new detail and it's very, very, distracting. “Hey,” Zero murmurs as realisation dawns on him that maybe his vision is a little _too_ good, “Did you, uh, fit me with contacts or something while I was out?”

Blue huffs a laugh against Zero's skin and he can feel every movement of it. “I was wondering when you'd notice,” he smirks and Zero tries to catalogue all the extra little details he can see in the expression now. “I may have made a couple of adjustments...just in case you were without your visor sometime again in the future and needed…” Blue's eyes fall down to Zero's lips unconsciously but OH BOY does Zero notice, “...you know,” he finishes lamely, clearly having lost his thought to the idea of kissing Zero.

Zero gets it. Every inch of him hurts, but man, if he doesn't want to press every inch of him against Blue anyway. “Yeah,” he smirks. “I can see how that would be useful…”

Zero's eyes flicker to Blue's lips - intentionally - and grins up at Blue cheekily. He waits for the inevitable blush to spread across Blue's freckled cheeks before he leans ever so slightly forward to take Blue's lips in his.

The kiss is so gentle, and so restrained, that it makes his heart ache. No one’s ever held him with such reverence. And Blue is so soft, and shy, his movements cautious, that it reassures Zero that he’s not alone in the Life Altering department. Maybe this is all just as foreign to Blue as it is to him. The timid brush of lips only takes place for a moment but even this brief affirmation of their feelings settles something deep inside him as a new kind of peace flows through his bones.

The kiss breaks, but their embrace doesn’t; both breathing in the closeness of each other after so long in denial.

Zero’s floating in a drug- (and kiss-) induced haze until Blue utters something against his lips which sounds like another karking apology. He realises, suddenly, that this is what a relationship with Blue is going to be like - moments of bliss, followed by profound irritation, over and over and over again. It doesn’t sound too bad actually.

“-sorry, sorry, sorry-” Blue’s muttering between the gentlest of kisses against his many, _many_ , bacta patches.

“Hey, now,” Zero says soothingly but his effort to comfort Blue is shot to pieces when he moves his arm to embrace him and a sudden pain shoots through his arm. He yells wordlessly and falls back against the pillows, exhausted and  _pissed_.

_Oh right_ , he remembers sardonically, _flesh arm real bad right now_. _Cybernetic arm super badass and probably not good for cuddling until you’ve read the instruction manual…_

Blue must have seen his reaction because he immediately retreats, like a frightened animal, to the bedside chair, which is one hundred percent not what Zero wanted. He makes some kind of whining noise to communicate as much.

“No,” Blue argues, “You’re hurt, and it's my fault, and I’m making it worse, and I shouldn't even-”

“You were making it _better_ ,” Zero counters. “Come here before I _make_ you come here.”

Blue gives him a withering look before inching back towards the bed with faux-reluctance. Zero watches in amusement as Blue somehow manages to snuggle into the inch of space available next to Zero in the single cot; the tiny man compacted into a position that ought to be impossible; his dress shirt more wrinkled than it’s ever been. “Threats of violence won’t always work, you know,” he mutters. 

Zero smiles down at him, at the mess of red hair tucked against his shoulder, and feels his pain seeping away with every touch and radiated warmth from Blue's embrace. “I don’t know, Adnau,” he says blissfully, pressing a firm kiss against his hair, “It did get us this far after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, there you have it. happily evil after ;-)
> 
> Thanks to all of you for sticking with my, uh, rather sporadic update schedule, and _very_ limited tech knowhow.
> 
> Special thanks to [Prim_the_Amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing) for requesting such a great prompt <3 
> 
> And a head's up that I've just put myself forward for Fandom Trumps Hate this year too (writing for any fandom) so keep an eye on my [tumblr](http://vands88.tumblr.com/tagged/FTH-2019) for updates!


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